


Pride and Other Collective Nouns

by Harlanhardway (Target44)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Arthur is Type A, Dogs, Dream Sharing isn't a thing, Eames is okay with it, M/M, it's not the dogs, large animal roadkill, the dogs are fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:40:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Target44/pseuds/Harlanhardway
Summary: Arthur doesn't need a Guide.  He has been managing just fine without one, thank you very much.  So what if he had a massive crush on Eames in high school?  What does it matter if now, more than ten years later, it turns out Eames is a Guide, and still hotter than the surface of the sun, and seems to like him?  How does that change anything?





	1. The Accident

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: large animal roadkill (non graphic), brief mention of suicide (not main character)

  
  
Arthur got his learner's permit three days before he emerged as a Sentinel.  
  
His mother had already enrolled him in driver's ed and sitting there, with all the other Sophomores, he had been forced to listen to Mr. Matthews explain about shuffle steering and defensive driving while trying to block out the overpowering smell of Devin Heaney's excessive use of Axe body spray, and the click Stephanie Weston made in the back of her throat every time she took another sip of the mocha frappuccino she always bought before class from the school vending machine.  As a teenager, the two things had become inexorably linked in Arthur's mind.  
  
In the Montana Public School System, Sentinel-Guide education fell under the same umbrella category as sex education, meaning that basic biological imperatives were alluded to over the course of three confusing, awkward and somewhat contradictory lectures centered around the idea that any related problems could and should be solved through God, marriage and self control.  Thus, lacking any other source of real guidance, everything Arthur knew about being a Sentinel, he learned in driver's ed.  Driving and managing his condition developed as the same skill set.  The same techniques that a driver might use to avoid road weariness applied equally well to a Sentinel without a Guide, avoiding a zone.    
  
One late September evening, twelve years after finally passing his driver's test, Arthur found himself driving down the highway from Missoula to his mom's house in Stevensville.  It was only an hour and a half commute, but he had already driven in from Seattle early that morning and after spending most of the afternoon in a meeting, he was tired.  The smoke was bad that summer and his eyes felt sandy and dry.  There were forest fires all through the Nez Perce and Lolo National Forests and smoke hung thick the air, settling over the Missoula Valley in a haze.  Everything was coated in a thin layer of white ash and the sun burned red in the sky.  
  
He scanned the windshield, keeping his eyes moving.  Don't target fixate.  Turning off the radio, he rolled off the gas and downshifted to fourth, feeling the slide and catch of the clutch, listening to the roar of the engine as the rpms shot up.  He shifted back up.  Don't target fixate.  He cycled through checking his mirror and his blind spot, scanned both sides of the road for wildlife, then rolled down his driver's side window.  Don't target fixate.  The wind hit his face and he took a deep breath in, smelling smoke and pine pollen.  
  
He glanced over towards the passenger seat where he had thrown his suit jacket and briefly regretted not hanging it up in the back.  Setting cruise control, he fished around for the hanger he knew he had thrown in the footwell behind him earlier in the afternoon, then tried to ease his jacket onto it one-handed before giving up and steering with his knee for a few seconds.  It was an awkward balancing act.  
  
Everything was a balancing act for Arthur.  Any task that required focus and concentration could lead to fixating which could lead to a zone, but too little attention meant errors, meant poor quality of work and things being missed.  Arthur hated it when things were missed.  
  
He became very good at multitasking.  Flicking cruise control back off, he set the dash display to show fuel efficiency and eased his foot off the gas pedal until the display showed his fuel economy to be over 25 mpg.  He scanned the sides of the road for deer.  The more balls in the air, the more his attention was spread across all five senses, the less likely he was to zone.  He imagined masturbation was probably a little less like playing Russian roulette for the rest of the population.  
  
Loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top button of his dress shirt, Arthur glanced into his rearview mirror.  Nothing.  He checked his blind spot and both side mirrors.  He was alone on the highway.  He glanced down at the dash display again: 32 mpg.  He was coming off Lolo pass and the road was at a slight downward incline.  His eyes flicked back up to the windshield.  
  
BAM!  
  
Before he could so much as blink, a big bull elk with a beautiful five-point rack leapt out of the woods, over the guardrail on the side of the highway, and slammed hard into the side of his 2003 VW Passat.  
  
It hit the car, smashing into the passenger's side door, before rolling up and over the hood like a cartoon, and careening off the other side and into the oncoming lane.  Arthur slammed on the brakes and felt the car shake as the anti-lock braking system kicked in, but his car was already sliding sideways, spinning out across the highway.  He took his foot of the brake and tried to steer out of the skid.  
  
It no longer smelled like smoke in Arthur's car.  All he could smell was musk.  There was hair caught, wedged in the smashed driver's side window and Arthur could smell it.  
  
His seatbelt pressed painfully against the side of his neck and his head felt impossibly heavy.  He strained to keep it upright, his eyes locked on the passenger side door.  It was strangely beautiful the way it had caved in, the elegance and efficiency of German engineered crumple zones, the shattered spiderweb of glass that clung, suspended in the contorted window frame, the newly twisted lines of the unibody.  He had opened his mouth to gasp in surprise when the Elk hit and the air tasted like woodsmoke.  
  
He kept scanning, studying the refraction of light through the glass, smelling the musk and blood that had smeared itself against his car.  Breathing in the residue of the Elk.  There were three hairs stuck in the glass.  He could taste it on his tongue.  The entire essence of the Elk, left behind in three hairs.  
  
Most Sentinels and Guides emerged sometime around age twelve or thirteen.  But just as some children go through puberty late, Arthur had emerged several years later than most.  He had been sixteen, sitting on the school bleachers after class, reading the _Sandman_ anthology he had stolen from the Missoula County Library at the beginning of the year and trying to decide if he thought smoking was genuinely cool or stupid and poser-ish.  The football team had been practicing in the field below and Arthur had glanced over just in time to see the new transfer student crouching down into position on the offensive line.  New to the team, he had been put in as left tackle and when he bent over in preparation for the snap, the unobstructed view that that provided of his ass in tight, white pants, was enough to drag Arthur right over the edge and into his first zone-out.  He had come out of it three hours later with a bad case of dry mouth and a nebulous sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.  
  
Contrary to popular belief, zoning out was not the end of the world.  Most Sentinels could find their way back out of a first, second, or third degree zone-out on their own.  Usually, the more senses involved in a zone-out, the longer it took to come back from it, but generally they were only dangerous if one happened to be doing something life-threatening at the time, like driving, or swimming, or swallowing, for example.  A Baseline might brave negative fifteen degree weather in sandals and a sweatshirt if they just needed to run outside really quick to warm up the car.  A Sentinel would have to think twice about the risk of zoning out half-way down the driveway and dying of exposure.  
  
The next two and a half years of high school had been hardening.  Sentinel-Guide Pairs were not uncommon, they constituted about seven to eight percent of the general population and Arthur wasn't the only Sentinal in the school.  But in a rural Montana high school of less than two hundred students, he was definitely the only one still emerging.  
  
Looking into a microscope was problematic, as was listening too carefully to music, studying diagrams, reading maps, and overly-enjoying a fucking Mars bar.  Then there was Eames, the new transfer student, Adam Eames.  He might as well have been named Rod Serling as far as Arthur was concerned, because whenever he showed up, it meant the Twilight Zone was about to start.  Just hearing Eames' voice, echoing down the hall or out of an open window, could send Arthur into a zone so fast he wouldn't know what had hit him.  Then, hours later, he would come to in the nurse's office with a dick drawn on his face in permanent pen or, on few memorable occasions, wake up shoved inside a locker and be forced to kick at the door until the night janitor found him and let him out again.  
  
But Arthur had learned.  He had built his defences high and had come to guard himself closely.  Always vigilant, always scanning, always keeping his attention spread, he trained himself to pace the perimeter of his own mind, tirelessly, without pause.  
  
There was a danger to this, however.  The danger being that if he zoned with his attention spread across all his senses, he ran the risk of zoning all the way out, a fifth level zone, all the way down, down, down into himself with no way of finding his way back.  
  
Arthur had vaguely expected that if he ever fell into limbo at the bottom of a fifth level zone, he would have no awareness of it.  He did not expect it to be particularly soothing, or comforting.  He did not expect his shoulder to ache and his tongue to feel dry and swollen, or for Eames to be there.  Perhaps he should have.  Eames, after all, had been the man, at the time hardly more than a boy, who had started it all.  
  
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Arthur had always hoped that Eames would have grown up and gotten married to the prom queen, gotten a shitty job at the papermill, and that he and his wife would have both gotten fat and had five screaming, bratty kids and spent the rest of their lives, not miserable, but feeling depressingly unfulfilled and inconsequential.  That by now, Eames would be balding with chronic hemorrhoids and researching ways to lower his sperm count because his wife didn't believe in contraception and Arthur would run into him at the grocery store while in town visiting his mom and smile politely and Eames would be embarassed and pretend not to recognize him and Arthur would allow it out of kindness.  
  
This was not the Eames that found Arthur in limbo.  
  
The Eames that was crouched over him, supporting his C-Spine and telling him to stay calm, to listen to the sound of his voice, to lift his right hand if he understood, was the other Eames.  The one that had also aged with Arthur, but well, and that Arthur pretended he did not still occasionally jerk off to.  He had a weathered face and there were laugh lines around his eyes and a thick white scar bisecting his right eyebrow.  The boyish fitness he had displayed in high school had developed into the solid strength of a man and he had grown a sandy blond beard that matched his neatly combed hair.  His voice was rougher, deeper, like perhaps he had taken up smoking at some point and then tried quit, but only with partial success.  His eyes were brown and his lips were full and pink, they looked soft.  
  
He was a Guide.  
  
That was new, even Arthur was not masochistic enough to have ever imagined Eames as a Guide, but it was limbo, and things were allowed to not make sense.  
  
Arthur lifted his right hand up to Eames' face and carefully traced the scar in his eyebrow with one finger.  "It would be you," he mused.  
  
====================================  
  
Most large office buildings maintain a recovery room in the same way that most department stores maintain a baby-changing room.  Recovery rooms were places Sentinels could go to recover from a zone or when they were feeling overwhelmed.  They were soundproofed and always smelled vaguely of Febreze or like a Glade Plug-in.  Sentinels could lounge in hypoallergenic Micro Modal upholstered lounge chairs and look at TV screens displaying timelapse nature footage on an endless loop.  They tended to put Arthur on edge and he had avoided them since moving to the city.  If he ever found himself in one, it was generally because he had zoned-out at his desk and been brought there.  
  
He was definitely not in one now.  
  
Arthur drifted awake as if emerging from out of a hot bath, his surroundings taking shape slowly as the steam from it dissipated around him.  He stretched, feeling the soft, cool linen sheets against his bare legs.  Someone had stripped him of his suit before putting him to bed, leaving him in only an undershirt and boxer briefs.  Taking a deep breath in through his nose, he could smell the cedar shake roof above him, heating in the sun.  There was something warm and soft, burrowed up against his hip and he brought one hand down to inspect it, not feeling like opening his eyes just yet.  His fingers brushed up against a cold wet nose.  The lump moved and let out a low whine beside him and then his fingers were being licked and nuzzled and encouraged to scratch behind soft ears.  
  
A dog and a cedar shake roof: he was clearly not in his car on the side of the road, nor a hospital, nor a recovery room,  nor his mother's house.  
  
This should have been disconcerting, but Arthur felt oddly calm and refreshed.  Normally after coming out of a zone, Arthur would feel hungover, disoriented, and stretched thin, like he wanted to crawl into a dark hole in the ground and sleep for a week.  But instead of that, he found himself sighing in contentment and relaxing back into the mattress.  It creaked as he shifted and the dog crawled a little further up the bed so that he could better scratch at it's ears.  There was someone else in the house: someone heavy, wearing work boots, with a confident gate, probably a man, and another dog.  
  
Arthur opened his eyes and pushed himself up into a sitting position.  The room was lit only by the light that filtered in through the drawn curtains, but it must have been the late morning because the sun was already high in the sky and filling the room with a soft golden glow.  He could see his suit jacket hanging over a chair by someone's writing desk.  His shoes and the rest of his clothes had been neatly folded and stacked on the seat.  The dog on the bed next to him was an old, grey-muzzled Chinook, it had started to whine and lick his fingers again now that he had stopped petting it.  When he brought his hand back up to its side, it flipped onto its back and wagged its tail happily at the attention.  
  
"Charlie, you traitor.  That dog would sell me out in a second over a belly rub."  
  
Arthur looked up.  Eames stood in the doorway, the other dog, a German Pointer, at his heels.   Drawing his hand back, away from Charlie's thick coat, Arthur resisted the urge to fold his arms protectively across his chest.  He felt exposed in just his undershirt.    
  
"Why am I here?"  
  
There was a bruise forming across his chest where his seatbelt had held him in place and he could feel his hair sticking up at odd angles from sleeping with gel in it.  
  
Eames folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe, still not quite coming into the bedroom.  "You were in a car accident last night.  I found you zoned-out in the front seat of your car."  
  
"Yes, but why am I here?"  he repeated, placing extra emphasis on the last word.  "Why not in a hospital, or at my mother's house?  I had ID on me and while I realize that this town has not quite made it to the 21st century yet, surely you at least own a phonebook."  
  
Looking up briefly towards the ceiling, Eames sighed with an air of bone-deep resignation. "Thank you for that."  
  
He pushed off the door frame and entered the room.  "I am an Emergency and Wilderness EMT.  There was nothing the ER at St. Patt's would have done for you that I didn't already do except make you sit in their waiting room for two hours.  I called your mother last night to let her know you were safe.  She's on her way to pick you up now."  
  
He came around to the side of the bed and reached out with one hand towards Arthur's face, but paused before making contact, raising his eyebrows and waiting for permission.  
  
Arthur jutted his chin out towards the outstretched hand and Eames took hold of it.  He pulled a penlight of his pocket and shone it in Arthur's eyes, watching them dilate, then turned it off and asked Arthur to track his finger, back, forth, up and down while asking simple questions.  "How are you feeling?"  "Any pain or numbness in your hands or feet?"  "Headache or nausea?"  He let go.  
  
"Not even a concussion.  You might want to go into Urgent Care and get a few X-rays done just to be sure, but you'll be fine."  
  
Refusing to think about the feel of those warm hands on his face, the rasp of a calloused thumb that had rested almost in the corner of his mouth against his day-old stubble, Arthur bit his lower lip and nodded.  His mouth was dry and his neck was sore, but otherwise he felt fine.  
  
Eames handed him a glass of water.  "I gave you an IV of saline solution last night, but dry mouth is normal after a deep zone like that."  
  
Arthur nodded, he knew all about zoning.  Once, he had woken up with his feet sunk deep in the sand and the incoming tide lapping at his thighs after dropping into a third degree zone the first time he had seen the ocean.  He had pissed himself on the corner of Third and Pine in downtown Seattle after listening too intently to a street violinist playing outside the Pike Place Market.  He knew all about waking up scared and humiliated and hungover.  
  
What he knew nothing about, was waking up clean, and warm and hydrated with a dog watching over him and a living, breathing, Carhartt advertisement checking his pupil dilation and bringing him water and, judging by the smell coming from the kitchen, potentially also, at some point, really bad drip coffee.  
  
=========================================  
  
Eames had a dry sense of humor and a sarcastic wit.  He had not married the prom queen and had known he was a Guide since he was ten years old and pulled his paternal grandmother out of a zone after his grandfather had died.  He worked for the Forest Service as a Fire Engineer and Wilderness EMT and had just come off a three week hitch in Idaho, when he had come across Arthur on the side of the road.  As far as Arthur could tell, he lived alone with his two dogs, Charlie, the elder statesman of the household, and Reba, who was two.  
  
"You like dogs?"  They were sitting around Eames' kitchen table drinking coffee, which was, as predicted, terrible, and eating peanut butter toast.  Eames hadn't been to the store since coming off hitch so it was all he had to offer in the way of breakfast food outside of cookie dough flavored Clif bars and a couple of sorry-looking, half-brown, slightly soggy bananas that had spent the last three weeks at the bottom of a cooler.  
  
Arthur looked up from where he had been playing with Reba.  Charlie lay stretched out across his feet.  "I'm more of a cat person," he replied, continuing to scratch Reba under the chin.  
  
They heard his mother pulling up the gravel drive not long after that and Arthur stood, disrupting Charlie's nap, and shuffled to the door.  He had on a pair of borrowed sweatpants and a henley that felt about four sizes too big and was carrying a plastic grocery bag stuffed with his suit, wallet, keys and cell-phone.  Eames had had the forethought to grab his computer bag out of the back seat of his car the night before and Arthur's mother insisted on taking it out to the car for him after pulling him into a bone-crushing hug.  She would have taken his grocery bag full of clothes too had he not leveled her with the most stubborn and defensive stare he could bring himself to level on her, tightened his grip around the plastic handles and stalked out to the car with a nodded thank you for Eames and a goodbye scratch behind the ears for Charlie and Reba.  
  
Five minutes later, he and his mother were headed down the highway towards Missoula in his mother's Toyota pickup.  The plan was to grab the rest of his things out of his car on the way into town, then his mother would drop him off at his appointment at Urgent Care.  While he was getting checked out, she would arrange for his car to be towed and get a start in on his insurance claim.  Arthur felt suddenly very tired; hopefully it would all go smoothly and they would be back in Stevensville by five o'clock.  
  
"That Adam Eames is a very nice boy."  
  
Arthur sighed, leaning his head against the window.  "Yes, mother."  
  
"We're both very lucky he came along when he did."  
  
"Yes, mother."  
  
"Then I assume you have already arranged to take him out to dinner sometime this week?"  
  
"Yes -- wait, no what?  Why?"  
  
Arthur's mother turned to look at him coolly before bringing her attention back to the road.  "Because he saved your life, that's why.  It's the least you can do for him."  
  
"What?  Make him drive three hours to Missoula and back for a steak and a baked potato?"  Arthur's mother was not the homemaker type, he knew better than to assume an invitation to dinner at all implied that there would be cooking involved on the part of any person with the last name Levine.  
  
"Have him meet you at the Iron Horse."  
  
"Pub food, really?"  
  
His mother griped the steering wheel a little tighter and jutted her chin out in an expression he recognized very well from seeing it on himself in the mirror.  She pulled over onto the gravel on the side of the road and turned to face him.  "Arthur, the man just got off three weeks camped out in a pup tent on a fire crew, pulled you out of a level five zone and spent all night making sure you didn't slip back.  Buy him a beer and a burger and pretend that you're grateful."  
  
She had turned sixty that year and her hair was almost completely grey, but her eyes were as sharp as they had ever been and brooked no room for argument.  
  
"Here."  She pulled out her cellphone, scrolled down to Eames' home number and handed it over.  "While we still have cell service."  
  
Arthur took it and hit the call the button, it rang a good seven times before anyone picked up.  
  
"Hello."  
  
"Hi," Arthur paused for a moment, not quite sure how to proceed.  He refused to look over at his mother for guidance.  "It's Arthur.  Meet me at the Iron Horse tomorrow night, I'm buying you a beer and a burger."  He had phrased it neither as an invitation, nor as a question.  
  
There was an awkward beat of silence, then Eames laughed.  It was a deep laugh, deeper than Arthur remembered from high school, and for a moment he had the strange thought that if bears purred, it would probably sound a lot like Eames' laugh.  "Why Arthur, whatever for?"  
  
"As a gesture."  
  
"A gesture, really?"  
  
Arthur gritted his teeth.  "Yes, as a thank you gesture."  
  
"Ah, there they are, the magic words I was looking for.  I will see you at seven, Arthur.  Don't be late."  There was a teasing lilt to his voice and he hung up before Arthur could reply.  
  
=================================  
  
The Iron Horse was a country bar in the sense that it hadn't been legal to smoke inside in seven years, but the interior still smelled like old cigarettes.  There were two beat-up pool tables in the back, keno machines in the front and a Big Game Hunter video game machine by the door to the bathrooms.  The price of a hamburger depended upon how many patties it contained and the only vegetarian option, unless someone was willing to pretend that the fryer-lard was vegetarian or that chicken wings did not count as meat, was peanuts, which one could buy in a red Solo cup and shell right onto the bar-room floor.  
  
Eames was already there when Arthur arrived at 7:00 p.m. on the dot.  He had half a beer and a pile of peanut shells in front of him and seemed to be in deep conversation with the bartender.  The TV above the bar was already playing pre-game commentary for that night's football game, and Arthur approached with a sense of dread.  He did not want to spend the entire evening discussing the Seahawks, or, god forbid, the fucking Grizzlies.  If he had to listen to more than five minutes of debate over some NCAA Division I FCS football rivalry, his mind might retreat back to limbo in self-defense.  
  
"Arthur," Eames turned to face him.  His posture was open and relaxed and his eyes crinkled up in the corners as he smiled.  He had a crooked front tooth and Arthur found himself staring at it.  He remembered those crooked teeth very well and, even though he had no right or reason to be relieved, it made something warm break open in his chest to see that Eames had not gotten them straightened.  "Tell me, Darling, what was the verdict?  Ruptured disk?  Crushed vertebrae?  Severed spine?  Though you do seem awfully ambulatory for that to be the case."  
  
"Minor whiplash.  They told me to avoid roller coasters and gave me stretching exercises."  Arthur briefly considered ordering a whiskey, then decided he would rather stay sober enough to drive should he feel the need to escape at a moment's notice and asked for a Coors Light instead along with a burger, two patties, no cheese, yes fried onions, no pickles, and curly fries, also no cheese.  Eames had already ordered.  
  
"Stretching exercises: I've been assigned a few of those myself over the years."  
  
"Don't tell me, years of running head-first into other 250lb men turns out to be hazardous for your health.  Color me surprised."  
  
"Why, Arthur, I'm flattered you would think that, but I'm barely 190 on a good day and you haven't cornered the market on hitting wildlife with your car, you know."  
  
"You hit an Elk?"  Hitting an animal in the road could happen to anyone really, it was common enough and, even when alert and prepared, it was sometimes simply unavoidable.  But Eames, sitting there in his workboots and beat-up Carhartt jacket with his ‘Lolo Fire’ baseball hat resting next to him on the bartop, drinking his Fat Tire IPA with just the hint of a tattoo peeking out of the open collar of his hickory striped shirt, looked so infallible, so cool and calm and in control, that Arthur had a hard time believing it.  
  
Eames shrugged, then pulled a rueful expression and took another drink of his beer.  "In a manner of speaking."  
  
"You're going to have to do better than that, Mr. Eames."  
  
"Mr. Eames?  Really, Arthur?"  
  
"Don't change the subject."  
  
Eames knocked a peanut against the side of his glass, then shelled it and swept the detritus onto the floor.  "It might have been a bighorn sheep."  
  
"Aren't those protected?"  
  
"I didn't do it on purpose, okay?  It might have been a shoot, shovel and shut up kind of situation."  
  
"Shoot?  I thought you hit it with your car."  
  
"It wasn't quite all the way dead yet."  Eames looked slightly pained and then added quickly, before Arthur could say anything else.  "I was alone in the middle of North Dakota and it was definitely on it's way out.  I wasn't about to back up over it or leave it there to die slowly on the side of the road.  I do have some humanity."  
  
"A bighorn sheep though, they're not exactly known for their speed.  That's almost as bad as hitting a cow.  Where you drunk or something?"   With no other way to get around except to drive, and sometimes not much else to do besides drink, drunk driving was not nearly as uncommon in the rural West as it probably should have been.  
  
"No, just road-weary I suppose."  Eames shelled another peanut and looked up at the sports commentators on the TV.  "That was before I got the dogs."  
  
Arthur wasn't sure what road-weariness might have to do with dogs, but their food arrived shortly after and he let the subject drop.  Eames had ordered steak tips and a twice baked potato.  
  
The food was nothing special, greasy and well matched to a Coors Light, if that could in any way be a compliment.  Objectively, Arthur knew this, but he had a secret nostalgic fondness for Coors Light.  He had heard it called 'beer-flavored dishwater' and 'redneck gatorade' before, but that was just it, a person could drink it all night long and, unless they were actually shotgunning it or doing keg-stands, were unlikely get more than pleasantly buzzed or wake up hungover the next day.  Besides, curly fries were amazing.  
  
Curly fries were amazing and Eames had a nice speaking voice and a nice smile and smelled lovely, like his house.  He smelled like fresh-cut cedar, fabric softener, wildfire smoke, and maybe a little bit like paving tar, probably from driving past the road construction on Front Street with his windows rolled down.  
  
"Deal."  
  
"What?"  Arthur's eyes flicked up from where they had been watching the crooked line of Eames' teeth as he talked.  The little crinkles forming in the corners of Eames' brown eyes let Arthur know he was being laughed at.  He tried to be annoyed by it, but couldn't, so he did his best to pretend, just on principle.  “What do you mean, deal?”  
  
"I mean, I’ll take that bet.”  
  
They had been talking about whiskey.  Specifically, Arthur had maintained that an American-distilled single barrel whiskey was basically moonshine that had been commercially produced and was thus less likely to blind you but was no more enjoyable to drink than rubbing alcohol.  Eames had replied that he didn't particularly give a damn what Arthur wanted to call it, but there was a single barrel whiskey out of a distillery in Hood River that he would pit against any Scotch or blended malt Arthur wanted to bring to the table.  To which Arthur had said that he bet even the shit bar they were in stocked a better Scotch then whatever drinkable paint-thinner they were trying to pass off as whiskey in Oregon.  
  
Eames continued, "How about this: I'll buy a bottle of the best Scotch this place has on hand and, if I'm right, which I will be so you had best make your way over to the ATM now, you have to pay me back for it."  
  
Arthur raised one eyebrow, "You're going to let me be the judge?"  
  
"Well I won't make you drink alone, but you'll be the judge."  
  
"What makes you think I won't lie."  
  
Eames leaned one elbow against the bar and let the smile that had started in his eyes spread down to his mouth.  "My dear Arthur, we both know that you are much too stubborn and much too proud to lie about something like whiskey."  
  
Arthur narrowed his eyes, then signaled the bartender to close out their tab while Eames walked outside to the attached liquor store nextdoor.  
  
They met back up in the parking lot and Eames held up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, taking it out of it's brown paper sack to show Arthur, then climbing into his truck and pulling away, pausing briefly before turning left onto Front Street so that Arthur could follow.  
  
============================  
  
Eames, the smug fuck, was right. _Of course he’s right_ , Arthur thought to himself, _he's always right, that's what makes him such a smug fuck._ Eames, for his part, had the decency not to say anything as Arthur wordlessly pulled out his wallet and handed over a fifty with a look on his face that said, ‘If you try to give me change I will rip your fucking head off.’  
  
The dogs had been fed and walked and put to bed and the house was mostly quiet as they sat half-facing each other on the couch.  It was a warm late-summer evening and the living room window was open to let in the cool night air and Arthur could hear the buzzing of the cicadas and the rustle of the wind through the tall grass and in the trees.  
  
Maybe that was why he found the recovery rooms in the city so disconcerting: they were too quiet.  They were either too quiet or they would pipe in some form of white noise that was supposed to be calming but was, in fact, only more off-putting.  His ears would be drawn to the loops in the recording as he tried to separate out the layers of pre-recorded sound in his head.  It was like an auditory uncanny valley and was utterly dissimilar to the real sounds of a summer night.  
  
"I do remember you from high school, you know."  
  
Arthur let his eyes slide over to Eames, who was lounging against the opposite end of the couch.  "How about we just pretend that you don't, thank you very much."  
  
"I'm surprised you never got yourself a Guide; even back then you were obviously strong.  They would have funneled you right into a government job.  Between the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security you probably could have written your own contract."  
  
"I prefer not to inexorably link my sanity and mental stability to some Guide," the way he said the word was bitter and almost spiteful, "and there isn't a retirement plan good enough to make me want to sign my life away to the political whim of whatever asshole wins the electoral college."  
  
The government contracts offered to Sentinel-Guide Pairs were, by all accounts, extremely generous in terms of pay, benefits and retirement plan but they were binding and they were for life.  
  
Eames idly swirled the scotch around in his glass.  "You don't look like you've relaxed one single day in the eleven years since I last saw you, don't you ever just let go?"  
  
"No, of course not."  Arthur looked over at him incredulously.  
  
"You could, if you wanted to."  
  
Arthur snorted and took another drink of whiskey.  "You're going to show me how, are you?"  
  
Peering at him from across the couch, Eames tilted his head slightly to one side in consideration.  "No, that's something you'll have to figure out for yourself, but I can keep you safe while you try."  
  
Arthur put his glass down on the coffee table and stood up, abruptly angry.  "Fuck you."  He walked across the room to the open window, then turned back around and started to pace.  "Just, fuck you.  I'm not going to become dependent on one of you."  His lip curled and he looked down on Eames in scorn and disgust.  "That's what you want from me isn't it?  For me to chase around after you, pathetically begging for scraps, like a dog."  
  
"No." Eames put his drink down and stood up as well.  "That's not what I want."  
  
"Then what is it?  Huh?  What could you, and all the rest of the fucking Guides, possibly be getting out of any of this?  And don't spout any of that true love, sacred purpose, divine duty mumbo jumbo bullshit at me because as far as I can tell the only difference between a Sentinel-Guide Pair and a fucking Baseline married couple is that half of all marriages end in divorce and half of all Pairs go fucking nuts if the other half decides they don't feel like holding up their end anymore.  And guess which one of the two I get to be?  So no, I don't get to relax and fuck you for asking."  
  
Arthur was breathing hard and his pacing had sped up.  He had started scanning.  He counted his steps, listened to the chirp of the cicadas outside, breathed in the fresh breeze, smelling the smoke and the pollen, and tracked the whorls and knots in the wood-panel floor under his feet with his eyes.  
  
Eames was standing very still in front of the couch.  His posture was open and relaxed but his face was blank and his eyes hard.  
  
"After my grandparents divorced, my grandfather stuck his head in the oven and turned on the gas."  Eames’ low voice rang clearly through the room.  "They divorced in their sixties.  It was my grandmother’s idea and I had just emerged as a Guide so I was able to help her through the transition, but my grandfather didn’t have anyone and he didn’t know how to be alone in his own head anymore.  
  
"Do you have any idea how hard it is for a Guide to be alone?  It’s like being locked in a padded room without any windows.  That's what we get out of being in a Pair, you self-righteous asshole, a renewed lack of desire to take a long walk off a short dock.  You think you're so special, you fucking Sentinel," he enunciated each syllable crisply, then paused.  
  
Arthur had stopped pacing and he watched as Eames took a deep breath.  He looked away.  When Eames turned back, his eyes were soft again and he looked almost fond.  
  
"I have the dogs and I cope and you do your fucked up Arthur thing and you cope and neither of us needs anything but I like you.  You're a fucking asshole and I like you and while I am perfectly capable of continuing to walk around with an empty place inside me, I would really prefer not to."  
  
Arthur looked over at him with slightly narrowed eyes.  "You're saying you want me to fill you."  
  
Cracking a smile, Eames cocked an eyebrow suggestively.  "Maybe we can fill each other."  
  
Even from across the room, Arthur could smell the scotch on his breath, the mintiness of the Icy Hot he had rubbed into his shoulder after letting the dogs out, and the musky, salty smell of the sweat that had collected and dried on the back of his shirt throughout the day.  Eames' beard looked rough but his mouth looked full and soft and it occurred to Arthur that he had just been invited to test that contrast for himself.  
  
He took a few steps forward and reached out with both hands and as he did, he could feel the warmth that he had woken up to the morning before reaching out to him in return.  Taking Eames' face in his hands, he pulled it towards himself to kiss.  It felt like sinking into a hot bath, buoyant and soothing and safe.  Eames ran his hands down Arthur's sides, then around to his back, untucking his shirt and mapping out the bare skin underneath.  Arthur arched into the touch, opening his mouth in a low moan and allowing Eames to lick inside.  
  
They stumbled towards the bedroom, shedding clothing as they went.  Arthur followed the lines of Eames's tattoos with his tongue, licking across his chest and biting hard into his bicep.  
  
"Fuck, Arthur!"  Eames swore and reached down, lifting Arthur up by his ass and tipping him backwards onto the bed.  Stripping him out of his pants and boxer briefs, Eames crawled onto the bed after him, allowing himself to be pulled down into a sloppy open-mouthed kiss.  Arthur's legs parted to make room for Eames in the cradle of his narrow hips and he thrust up, gasping when they make contact.  The soft, worn fabric of Eames's faded blue jeans pressed against Arthur's bare cock.  
  
"That's it, Darling, beautiful.  I've got you."  Eames's voice rumbled straight into Arthur where their chests touched.  He felt full of Eames, surrounded by him, smelling him and feeling him under his fingers and tasting him on his tongue.  He tasted of sweat and dirt and dead skin cells.  His short beard rasped against Arthur's clean-shaven face, and Arthur cold feel the shape of his crooked tooth against his tongue.  The weight and breadth and sheer mass of him, pressing Arthur down into the soft wool blankets at his back, was grounding.  
  
"Just like that Arthur, just like that."  Eames sighed into Arthur's neck as he bit his way down it to lick at the dip between Arthur's collarbones.  
  
Arthur's eyes fluttered open at the feeling of teeth on his chest and he bent forward to burry his face in Eames' hair, smelling it and feeling the soft blond strands against his face and tasting the salty bitterness of the dried sweat at his hairline.  "Eames.  Eames.  Eames," Arthur pleaded and demanded in equal measure as Eames cradled the back of his head in one hand, carding his fingers through Arthur's hair.  He traced his other hand down the smooth skin on Arthur's flank to his ass and Arthur rocked his hips forward, spreading his legs wider in invitation.  
  
He rubbed himself shamelessly against Eames' stomach, pawing at his shoulders and back and running his fingers through his hair and letting himself revel in every minute detail of the slide and press of skin and hair beneath his fingers.  He felt the pressure of a slick warm finger at his entrance, massaging and then slowly, slowly pushing in, and he bore down, pressing back and allowing Eames to fill him from the inside as well.  
  
He blanked out as he came, all his senses going off-line as input diffused into so much white noise and he floated on top of it, riding the chaos like a wave.  
  
When Arthur opened his eyes again, the lights were off.  The come and lube had been cleaned off of his stomach and from between his legs and he had been tucked in, under the blankets with Eames, who had stripped down to his boxer shorts and was breathing steadily and soothingly against the back of his neck.  Eames had one arm thrown over Arthur's waist, and was holding him loosely against his chest.  Arthur smiled to himself, tracing Eames' fingers in the dark, where they rested against his ribs.  
  
========================================  
  
When Arthur woke up the next morning, Eames was gone.  
  
He hadn't gone far though, Arthur could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen, feeding the dogs and starting the coffee machine.  He tracked Eames's progress around the house, listening to the sounds of him closing the windows and drawing the blinds against the coming heat of the day.  
  
Taking a moment to stretch and luxuriate in the feeling of loose-limbed contentment that still surrounded him, Arthur took stock of himself.  He felt rested and refreshed in a way he hadn't for a very long time.  It was like a decade-long siege had been lifted.  Fresh air blew through him, breathing new life into long-stagnant corridors in his mind.  
  
He found his underwear, discarded, tangled up in his trousers at the the foot of the bed, and pulled them on, his ears burning as he remembered the details of the night before.  It slowly started to sink in to him that the mind-alteringly good sex of the night before had, in fact, been him rutting up against Eames like a teenager until he blew his load as soon as Eames shoved a finger in his ass.  Though the crowning moment had to have been when, after coming all over himself, he had promptly proceeded to pass out.  Arthur briefly wondered if Eames had jacked off in the bathroom before coming back to the bedroom to clean Arthur up and tuck him in like a child.  
  
It was in the middle of this self-deprecating internal monologue that Eames appeared in the door, looking sleep mussed and slightly mischievous in his boxer shorts and ragged T-shirt.  His eyes were crinkled up in the corners and he flashed his crooked teeth as he smiled, stepping into the room.  Then he caught sight of Arthur's face.  
  
Arthur could see it, the second Eames decided against whatever he had been about to say.  The laugh lines in the corners of his eyes tightened, and his smile became close-lipped and strained.  He stopped and took a half a step back, towards the door.  The warm feeling of contentment that Arthur was beginning to realize came from Eames, began to recede and Arthur felt his defenses slowly coming back up, closing in around him and settling over his shoulders and chest like body armor, heavy and restricting.  He took a deep breath.  
  
_Fuck it._  
  
Two quick steps brought him forward to stand in front of Eames.  He looked directly into his eyes, they were soft and brown, almost golden, like honey. _He feels safe,_ Arthur thought to himself as he slowly leaned forward, burying his face in the crook of Eames' shoulder, _everything about him makes me feels safe and I haven't felt safe in so long._  
  
Arthur almost cried out in relief as he felt the warmth come rushing back.  Eames' arms came up to circle his back and he let himself melt, breathing in the scent of him, the warm cedar of the house, the woodsmoke, and the coffee brewing in the kitchen.  
  
"If this is going to be a thing, you are going to have to do considerably better than Folger's from now on."  
  
Eames laughed deep in his chest.  "Oh, Arthur, you know I don't do anything unless there's something in it for me."  
  
Arthur let his hands drift up to Eames' hips, his thumbs drawing circles in the hollows below Eames' iliac crest.  "I promise my stamina improves in direct relationship to the quality of the coffee I am served.  If you're not up to providing it, we will just have to go to my place."  
  
Running his hand up Arthur's back and into his hair, Eames tugged playfully at the loose curls at the back of his head.  "Eight hours is a long way to drive for a cup of coffee, but I suppose I might be persuaded."  
  
"An hour and a half,"  Arthur corrected.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"An hour and a half." Arthur pulled back to look Eames in the face again.  "I was at a job interview in Missoula the other day, that's why I was wearing a suit in the car.  I start the week after next."  
  
"And here I thought you were just being a pretentious asshole."  
  
Arthur shrugged, "Maybe a little of that too."  
  
"Well then, Darling," the mischievous smile from earlier returned in full force as Eames reached his hands down to Arthur's ass, lifting him up and nudging his legs apart to wrap around his hips.  "I suppose we will have to celebrate."  
  
Arthur ran his hands over Eames' shoulders, tracing the collar of his shirt and pulling it aside see his tattoos as Eames walked them backwards into living room and towards the kitchen.  Eames slid his fingers under the elastic of Arthur's boxer briefs and palmed his ass.  "How do you feel about being eaten out on the kitchen table, Arthur?  I quite fancy the idea of having you for breakfast."  
  
Arthur hummed, bringing his hand up to Eames' jaw to feel the roughness of his beard.  "I could warm up to the idea."  
  
He could hear Reba and Charlie playing outside as Eames put him down on the table and thought to himself, _I guess I'll have to find a place that allows dogs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> I don't really know what you would need to do as an EMT to clear someone after a major car accident, but I'm pretty sure that when someone with a potential head injury passes out for an extended period of time, you bring them directly to a hospital, no questions asked. However, Arthur just got pulled out of a really deep zone so... let's all pretend that that changes everything and what Eames did was 100% correct.
> 
> The only whiskey distillery I know of in Hood River is Pendleton and I don't think they make a single barrel whiskey. If they do, they don’t distill it in Hood River. I don't really know anything about whiskey in general, but it sounds like something Arthur might get his panties in a twist over.


	2. The Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it an Epilogue though, really? Do I get to call it that? Or is it just my inability to write a one-shot? I feel way better about this story, though, now that there is a part two.

  
  
Arthur looked across the table at Dom Cobb, then flicked his eyes over to the wall clock.  It was approaching eight-thirty.  Dom frowned at Arthur’s apparently wandering attention.  They had been friends since college and, when Dom had decided to legitimise the software development company he had been running somewhat off the books for years, Arthur had been the first one to tell him he needed a CFO if he had any hope of staying in business through the next tax season.  Two weeks later Dom had called him in for an interview and now here they sat: CEO and CFO respectively of "DreamShare."  
  
They worked well together, Dom would reach for the stars, and Arthur would figure out how to pay for it.  That being said, as a boss, Dom was demanding and somewhat of an ass and since his separation two years before, the amount of understanding he had for anyone's personal life had deteriorated to somewhere between non existent and 'I'm doing you a favor by sparing you the misery later on.'  
  
Arthur started shutting down his laptop.  "Dom, we're not getting anywhere.  The company is doing well but the fact is, you didn't file taxes for the first two years you were in business.  I'm doing what I can, but the next couple months are going to be tight, that's just how it's going to be.  Call me if anything comes up, I have to go feed the dogs."  
  
"How is that going for you anyways?  What was his name again, Eats?"  
  
"Eames."  Dom had especially little understanding or sympathy for Arthur's social life.  Probably because, previous to about six months ago when Eames had crashed, almost literally, onto the scene, Arthur had not had a social life, ever at all.  Somewhat thrown by the idea that Arthur, the consummate loner and staunchly self-sufficient solo act, seemed to have acquired a boyfriend, Dom relished every opportunity he could find to make some snide comment about it.  
  
Eames and Dom hadn't actually met yet, mostly because Arthur was avoiding it.  Dom was being a dick, but he was also going through a messy divorce, hardly got to see his kids, and was constantly under stress trying to get his business off the ground.  Arthur was somewhat willing to put up with his shit, but he was less willing to subject his new relationship to that kind of battery.  
  
"Oh yeah, you always call him by his last name, don't you; is that a Sentinel-Guide thing?  I always heard there was some sort of a, what's it called?  S and M element to it.  If you ever bond, are you going to have to wear a collar?"  Dom laughed, "I mean, he does collect dogs."  
  
Arthur stopped packing his laptop into his briefcase and looked up at Dom, raising both eyebrows and letting the insult hang between them for a moment.  "Dom, say something like that to me again and you can consider both our friendship and my tenure at this company over."  He finished packing his things away and walked towards the door.  "I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
_Fucking Dom Cobb._  
  
Arthur was pissed off as he drove home and continued to stew as he let the dogs out and fed them.  Dom was a fucking asshole.  Arthur had told him, years ago, about his fear of becoming dependent on a guide, about his insecurities about being in a relationship and sacrificing his sense of self for companionship.  So what if he liked it when Eames called him Darling?  So what if he had rented an apartment with an eye for the possibility that Eames might, potentially, one day move in with him?  So what if he watched the dogs sometimes?  
  
Arthur sat down heavily on the back porch, and glared out over the backyard.  Dom was a miserable prick.  
  
Charlie, Eames’ old Chinook, came up to lie on the porch beside him and shoved his muzzle into Arthur's lap.  Arthur sighed and pet his head, scratching him behind the ears.  
  
"Hey boy, you miss Eames?"  Charlie just looked up at him and wedged in closer, putting his paws up on Arthur's leg and trying to crawl more fully into his lap.  "Wow, watch it."  Arthur adjusted Charlie's paws away from where his nails were pressing painfully into his leg, then sighed and scratched at his back, leaning against the house.  "Yeah, I miss him too."  
  
Eames and Arthur had been together since the previous summer and it had mostly been good.  Eames still lived in Stevensville and Arthur worked long hours during the week so, outside of the few times Eames had driven down on a wednesday night to surprise him, they only saw each other on weekends.  It was worse now that it was summer.  Eames was away a lot, or his days off would fall during the week.  Sometimes he took the dogs but sometimes he couldn't and for awhile he had kenneled them, like he had always done, but then Arthur had volunteered.  
  
As much as Arthur was fond of Charlie and Reba, he hadn't just been being difficult when he had said he was more of a cat person, but after a few months of not seeing Eames for more than a few hours here and there, having them around the house felt good.  It was like a promise that he made to himself that Eames really was a part of his life.  That Eames was coming back.  
  
Arthur pulled out his phone and scrolled through to a photo Eames had sent him a few days ago.  He was wearing his nomex pants, fire boots, and helmet, with a polasky over his shoulder and was giving his best rakish smile to the camera.  His shoulders looked impossibly wide and his bare chest, smeared with soot and sweat, impossibly thick.  Based on the caption, Arthur was reasonably certain that Eames had intended him to jerk off to the photo and he had definitely done so, but sometimes he also just looked at it.  Sometimes, like now, he just pulled it up so he could look at Eames' smile and secretly pine and moon and miss him like an idiot.  
  
The phone went off in his hands and Shirtless Leering Eames was quickly replaced by Fully Clothed and Smiling Eames.  That was a rather nice picture too.  They were all nice pictures, really.  Arthur hadn't seen his boyfriend in two weeks, and was, at this point, pretty much ready to admit how pathetically in love he most definitely was.  He should probably tell Eames at some point.  
  
He pressed accept and brought the phone to his ear, "Eames?"  
  
"Good news, Darling."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I'm coming home."  
  
Arthur's face broke out in a huge smile.  He could feel his cheeks stretching into dimples and he let his head drop back as he closed his eyes.  He didn't care that his smile was coming through over the phone, that Eames could tell how happy he was.  He scratched Charlie's head and allowed himself to smile.  The fire was under control, they had brought in some more people from another burn over in Idaho that had been put out a few days ago.  Eames would be back by the weekend.  
  
=========================================  
  
Three days later, Arthur was in the kitchen when the phone rang where it hung on the wall next to the refrigerator.  Arthur had gotten a land line when he had his internet hooked up because, for one it was free and for two, cell reception was sometimes spotty in his house so it made sense to have a landline for emergencies, not that many people had the number.  
  
He picked up.  "Hello?"  Arthur tended not to identify himself straight away.  Telemarketers really did not need any help collecting and confirming his personal data.  
  
"Arthur, it's Dom."  
  
"What's going on?"  They hadn't talked directly for the past few days, only exchanging emails and work memos, which, considering the miniscule size of the company and that Dom was the CEO and Arthur the CFO, was actually quite the accomplishment.  
  
"Sorry to bother you so early on a Saturday," it was just past ten in the morning, "I know Eames was coming back into town this weekend."  
  
"What's going on Dom?"  Arthur really had no desire to deal with Dom's bullshit, for all of the aforementioned reasons.  He had been having a rather wonderful Saturday so far.  Eames had showed up the evening before, straight off a twenty hour drive from California.  They had slept in, and now Eames was parading around in Arthur's loosest pair of track pants while he did his laundry.  Arthur's loosest pair of track pants were decidedly not loose on Eames.  The view was rather lovely and Arthur would have much prefered to be enjoying it, rather than talking to, really anyone on the planet, definitely including Dom.  
  
"Look, I didn't want to bring this up at work but," Dom sighed over the phone, "I want to apologize for what I said the other day."  
  
Arthur stood up a little straighter next to the refrigerator and folded his free arm across his chest.  "You were out of line."  
  
"I know."  
  
"You're going through some stuff right, and I am understanding of that, but I won't take that kind of shit from anyone."  
  
"I know."  He paused and took a breath.  "I had a talk with Ariadne the other day, you remember her?"  
  
"The new programmer?  Sure."  
  
"Well, she overheard some of our last conversation and almost quit. She said she was not comfortable working in that kind of a hostile environment, and that she would support your claim if you decided to sue for harassment and discrimination."  
  
"I could, but I'm not going to."  
  
Dom sighed, "Yeah, I know.  I convinced her to give us a two week trial.  I'm pretty sure she'll stay.  In the meantime, I wanted to say that," he paused again, awkwardly, before continuing in a slightly stilted voice, "I am going to work on my attitude.  I'd like to meet Eames, he sounds like a good guy."  
  
"He is.  I appreciate the apology.  Maybe I'll bring him around the office in a few weeks.  Fire season will be almost over by then."  
  
"Great, great, I look forward to it."  
  
"I'll see you on Monday, Dom."  
  
"See you on Monday."  
  
Arthur hung up the phone and wandered out of the kitchen and into the laundry room.  He felt better, but really prefered to just not think about Dom at all.  If Dom was going to start pulling his head out of his ass, great.  If not, Arthur was not about to be disappointed.  
  
Eames was unloading the washer in the laundry room and as he bent over, the borrowed track pants pulled tight across his backside.  Arthur stopped, leaning against the doorframe and taking some time to appreciate it.  It reminded him of his first zone-out, almost fifteen years ago, when he had first seen Eames crouching down for the snap on a football field.  He still had a great ass, that had not changed at all.  
  
Eames wasn't a particularly tall man.  When they stood next to each other, Arthur could look him square in the eye, but Arthur liked that.  He liked that he didn't have to strain his neck up to kiss him and that if he walked up behind Eames right now, their hips would line up perfectly.  Arthur could drape himself over Eames' strong back and feel Eames' muscles flex under him and bite his neck and wrap his arms around his chest.  
  
Eames was so beautifully tanned.  He had probably spent the last few months walking around the fire camp with shirt off and Arthur would almost be jealous except that he could see the tan line, low on Eames' back, where his sweats were riding down.  Eames had a lilly white ass.  It really shouldn't have mattered, if Eames ran around buck naked or not, but it made something in Arthur's chest purr to see that tan line and to know that what was below it was only for him to see.  It was irrational and possessive, that thought, but Arthur liked it all the same.  Just as he liked how easily Eames could lift him and carry him around, or fuck him up against a wall.  Arthur had never thought that he would like that, but he did.  They both liked it.  It was almost their version of a trust fall, except without the falling.  It meant something to Arthur to be able to cede control and he knew it meant something to Eames to be able to hold him completely.  It settled some kind of protective urge in Eames in the same way Arthur staring at that tan line settled something in him.  
  
Arthur followed the waistband of the track pants with his eyes, watched the muscles shift as Eames straightened and then bent over again and the pants settled a little lower on his hips, revealing more porcelain-white skin.  Eames smelled different today, he hadn't been home in weeks and had used Arthur's shampoo that morning.  On the surface, he smelled like Dove body wash and Arthur's fabric softener, but it was only on the surface.  Arthur breathed in slowly through his nose.  Underneath that, he still smelled like he always did: like woodsmoke and diesel engines and like himself.  
  
Arthur came out of the zone to Eames' hand in his hair and on his hip.  He could feel the heat of Eames' fingers, pressing against his skin and leaned into the touch.  
  
"You've been zoning a lot."  It wasn't a question, but Arthur could hear the note of concern in Eames' voice.  
  
"I thought you wanted me to relax a little more around you."  
  
"A little warning would be nice."  
  
Arthur pulled away.  "It's not like I'm jumping off a bridge expecting you to catch me, you can always just let me get out of it on my own if it bothers you so much."  
  
"Arthur--"  
  
"Don't worry, it won't happen again."  Arthur was already walking away.  He hadn't showered or even gotten fully dressed yet and was embarrassed with his own self-indulgent thoughts: musing and zoning out to Eames' ass.  
  
"Arthur," Eames reached out, putting his hands on Arthur's hips, to stop him.  Arthur could have brushed past if he wanted to, but instead waited, letting Eames bring one hand up to run his fingers through Arthur's mussed morning hair.  "I do love you like this."  
  
Arthur raised a dark eyebrow and Eames continued.  "The fact is that you are a granite fortress, Darling.  Don't pretend that you just randomly fall into a zone without noticing because I don't believe that for a minute."  
  
Arthur pressed his lips together and looked to the side, feeling called out.  
  
"Which means, when I feel you losing control it was either: A) and accident, or B) deliberate.  So unless you tell me that it is deliberate, I will always, on some level, assume that it is an accident and I will worry."  
  
"I have been managing just fine for years all on my own, I don't need you to come save me everytime I zone out.  It's perfectly normal to go into a zone every once in awhile, I don't need your permission."  
  
"You are absolutely correct and you are under no obligation to inform me and a little bit of worrying won't kill me.  But," Eames stepped back, putting his hands in his pockets and smiling playfully, "When I worry, I can't get hard and when I pull you out of a zone and you are absolutely aching, like you were a few minutes ago, I would very much like to fuck you.  But the way things are, that is just not going to happen."  
  
Arthur put his hands in his pockets as well and stared back at Eames.  "You want to fuck me out of a zone."  
  
"I pretty much always want to fuck you.  You're the one who tends to come out of a zone hard as a proverbial rock."  
  
Arthur, who had been trying to stay cool and aloof for most of the conversation, broke.  Letting out a deep sigh, he relaxed into Eames, pressing his face into the other man’s neck.  "Fine."  He brought his hands up to run along Eames' sides and breathed in his smell.  "Is this what they call effective communication?"  
  
He felt Eames' arms close around his back and practically heard the smile in his voice.  "It might be."  
  
=======================================  
  
Two weeks later they were up at Eames' house in Stevensville.  The sun had just gone down and Eames was sitting at the kitchen table, reading by the open window.  He didn't have television or internet when he was out on a hitch, so he had gotten in the habit of reading trashy science fiction novels for entertainment, the kind you could pick up for a dollar in the bargain bin at any book exchange on the planet.  Arthur didn't totally understand the appeal, but was nonetheless weirdly turned on by the sight of Eames, lounging around in his worn-out jeans and flannel shirt, with the dogs at his feet, reading _The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat_ by lamplight.  
  
Arthur had gone out to grab his nalgene water bottle from the car and the screen door slammed shut behind him as he came in.  
  
"Hey, Eames?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"I think I might zone out in a bit."  
  
"Okay."  Eames turned a page on his book without looking up.  
  
Arthur rinsed out his water bottle and placed it upside down on the drying rack, before settling into the couch in the living room.  
  
He breathed in.  Eames smelled so good.  It had been a hot day and they had gone out to the lake with the dogs and Eames still smelled like fresh water and damp earth and sweat.  He had shaved earlier in the week, but had let it grow again and was sporting a good five days of stubble.  His unshaven face contrasted with his perfectly combed and parted hair.  Arthur like that, that Eames was relaxed and playful, but also knew how to be serious and fastidious.  
  
Arthur watched his soft brown eyes scan the page in front of him and listened to the soft whisper of his breathing.  Eames had broken his nose a few times over the years and Arthur could hear how it had healed just a tiny bit crookedly.  He liked that he could recognize Eames with his eyes closed just from how he breathed, from the way he smelled.  Studying the carefully combed line of his hair, Arthur wondered if he could recognize Eames just from the color of his hair.  He probably could.  It was such a very specific shade of sandy blond and it changed as the seasons changed, becoming lighter and sunbleached in the summer, and it was greying, not a lot, but just a tiny bit at the temples.  Arthur liked that.  It was like his teeth: not perfect, but just right.  
  
Being in a zone was somewhat like trying to play a 45 LP at 33 1/3.  All the information was there, but it wasn't being played at the proper speed.  Everything ran together into a sea of meaningless details.  In Arthur's experience, when a Guide pulled a Sentinel out of a zone, it was like stopping the record.  Everything would be reset to neutral, then restarted.  It quick, effective, and not unpleasant.  
  
This time there was no reset.  Nothing was stopped.  Instead it felt like the disc that had been scratching along at 33 1/3, had suddenly been popped up to 45 rpm and was now playing loud and clear.  Arthur had gone seamlessly from studying Eames' sandy blond hair from across the room to feeling it under his fingers.  From smelling the salt on his skin to tasting it.  
  
His eyes came back into focus and he looked up at Eames, who was straddling his lap like every wet dream he had ever had.  "Were you worried this time?"  
  
"Not in the slightest."  
  
Arthur brought his hands to the front of Eames' pants and undid the top button, easing down the zipper.  Eames was hard and straining against the front of his briefs.  Arthur smiled and slid down the couch, between Eames' legs, so he could fit his mouth over the bulge.  He breathed out, hot and heavy into the cotton and Eames bent forward to brace himself with one hand against the couch back and one hand in Arthur's hair.  
  
Arthur eased the jeans and briefs down Eames' hips and his cock sprung free, bobbing in the air in front of Arthur's face.  Arthur lost no time in nuzzling up to it, grabbing Eames's ass with both hands and pressing his hips forward, sucking and licking at him messily, then taking him in his mouth.  
  
"Arthur," Eames rocked forward, feeling his cock hit the back of Arthur's throat and then crying out as Arthur swallowed around him.  "Oh god, Arthur.  I thought you wanted me to fuck you."  
  
Arthur pulled back and looked up at him, his face smeared with spit and precome and his hair tangle from Eames' hand.  "Complaints?"  
  
"Not in the slightest."  
  
It felt good to lose himself in Eames, in how he smelled and felt and tasted, to be both adrift on a sea of sensory input, but also completely cogent and cared for and safe because it was Eames.  He could not possibly be lost because it was Eames he was lost in.  
  
Eames pulled back and there was a brief shuffling around and pulling off of shirts and pants until Arthur was lengthwise on the couch with his legs wrapped around Eames' ribcage and his hands around Eames' shoulders and in his hair and Eames pressed inside of him.  They didn't do this all the time, sometimes it was too much for Arthur.  After years of self-denial and iron control, letting someone in that far was overwhelming.  But today it felt different.  It felt like he was the land and Eames was the sea and the tide would come in, and the tide would go out and little bits of him would be washed away, only to be brought back again with the next wave, renewed and refreshed.  
  
Eames, for his part, seemed equally gone.  Eames liked to joke during sex.  Teasing and making light was his way of checking on Arthur, of making sure he was still with him, that it wasn't becoming too much.  But now, all Eames seemed able to do was cover Arthur with his body, trace his face with his hands, part his lips with his fingers and feel his tongue and thrust into him like Arthur was some secret piece of himself that he had lost and was trying to get back.  When he came he cried out and pulled Arthur close, cradling his head against his chest and stroking his dark hair, clutching at his back and breathing into his ear and pressing in deeper and deeper until Arthur could feel the come dripping out of himself and onto the couch.  
  
"Hey, Eames?"  After a few second of him not moving, Arthur pulled back enough to see Eames' face.  He looked groggy and incoherent.  Arthur pet his hair out of his face and helped him lift his head.  "Eames?"  
  
"Hmm?"  Eames smiled at him drunkenly and leaned forward to kiss Arthur on the bridge of his nose.  "You're beautiful, Darling.  That should be your new name.  When we get married, don't take my name, you should change it to Darling.  Then you can be my Beautiful Darling."  He started nuzzling Arthur's neck and biting at his earlobe.  
  
"Bed first, marriage discussions in the morning."  Arthur coaxed Eames to his feet and into the bedroom.  Normally it was Arthur who was half intoxicated and passing out, high on Sentinel-Guide hormones, after sex.  It felt good to try things the other way.  
  
He pulled back the covers and dumped Eames in bed, then went into the bathroom for a damp washcloth, cleaned up, threw on a bathrobe, and fed the dogs before climbing into bed himself.  Eames was already asleep when Arthur got back and he couldn't help but smile fondly at him and ghost a kiss across his cheek.  It should have been annoying, having to put Eames to bed, and he was always afraid that Eames felt that way about having to take care of him sometimes, but it wasn’t like that at all.  There was almost a rush to it, being able to take care of Eames.  It made everything inside of him glow in satisfaction.  
  
===============================================  
  
When Arthur woke up it was still early in the morning, which wasn't surprising considering how early they had gone to bed.  He felt wonderful, and not just in a thoroughly-fucked kind of way.  His senses were sharp and perfectly in focus, but he felt a million miles away from a zone.  
  
When he rolled onto his side he saw Eames, blinking his eyes open beside him.  Eames rubbed at his eyes.  "Well, I certainly hope that was as good for you, last night, as it was for me."  
  
Arthur smiled across the pillow at him.  "Meets and exceeds expectations."  
  
Eames gave him an unimpressed look, then started to climb over on top of him with a wicked smile, "Meets expectations, eh?  Some praise, we are definitely going to have to do better than-- shit, the dogs."  Eames immediately sat up, looking guilty and slightly distressed.  
  
Arthur pulled him back down, "I took care of it, they're fine."  He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, stretching out his hearing.  "Ruby is outside sniffing around the barbeque and Charlie is asleep in his dog bed.  I fed them last night, it’s okay."  
  
Eames let himself be pulled back down and rested his head on Arthur's chest.  He twined their fingers together on top of the sheets.  "Thanks."  
  
They lay in silence for a moment, then Arthur brought their joined hands up to his chest.  "I can still feel you inside me."  
  
Eames lifted his head up to shoot Arthur a devilish grin and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.  "I do try, Darling."  
  
Arthur rolled his eyes and cuffed the back of Eames' head.  "No, I mean, well that too, but also, I can still feel you, you know, inside me."  He gave Eames a significant look and Eames pulled back immediately.  Arthur could see him do a mental inventory and realize what he meant.  
  
Some Baseline myths had grown up over time surrounding the Pair bond.  Many assumed it was some kind of Vulcan-esc, mates-for-life, permanent mental connection kind of situation, when, in reality, it was simply a Sentinel and a Guide who lived deeply within each other's heads.  When Arthur and Eames were together, there was always a certain amount of mental overlap and they had established a mental distance that they were both comfortable with.  Sometimes one of them would slip a little deeper in the heat of the moment, but that was it.  Arthur hadn't realized it the night before, but the reason his senses felt so sharp was because Eames was stabilizing him.  He had slipped deeper into Arthur's mind than usual and was helping him bear the mental load that normally prevented him from stretching out too far with his senses.  
  
Eames extricated himself, pulling back to their established mental distance, and Arthur felt his absence like a vacuum.  "I liked it."  
  
Eames frowned and opened his mouth to respond but Arthur cut him off.  "I don't want to talk about it yet.  I know you've been thinking about it and I just want you to know that I've been thinking about it too.  I'm not ready to talk about it though, but maybe we can just..."  He turned away for a second, frustrated with his own inability to articulate what he wanted.  "Maybe we can just think about it, together."  
  
Eames squeezed his fingers and leaned over to kiss him, wet and sloppy and loud.  Arthur glared up at him when he pulled back, but Eames just smiled widely back.  "I'd like that."  
  
He layed back down and pulled Arthur over to snuggle up against his side.  "Even if we do decide to do that, to bond, I'm still always going to want to have dogs, you know that right?"  
  
Arthur sighed and elbowed him in the side.  "Yes, I have long since resigned myself to the fact that we will always have dogs.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, come find me on Tumblr [harlanhardway](https://harlanhardway.tumblr.com/)! Also, there is now a [Pinterest](https://www.pinterest.de/harlanhardway/pride-and-other-collective-nouns/)


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